Fox News airs fake story claiming Obama is funding Muslim museum

A fake news story from a parody website found its way on a "Fox & Friends Saturday" segment telling its viewers that during the government shutdown President Barack Obama is using his own money to keep a museum dedicated to Muslim culture open.

Media watchdog, Media Matters, reported that the moment occurred on October 5 when the co-hosts of "Fox & Friends Saturday" were discussing the closure of the World War II Memorial which resulted from the Republican-led shutdown.

“The Republican National Committee is offering to pay for it to keep it open so that the veterans from Honor Flight are going to be able to go and see this because who did it honor? It honored them,” co-host Anna Kooiman said during the report. “It really doesn't seem fair, especially — and we're going to talk a little bit later in the show too about some things that are continuing to be funded. And President Obama has offered to pay out of his own pocket for the museum of Muslim culture out of his own pocket, yet it's the Republican National Committee who's paying for this.”

It so happens that Kooiman was referencing a quote from the National Report, a parody news site.

The story said that Obama told reporters earlier this week:

“The International Museum of Muslim Cultures is sacred. That is why I have taken it upon myself to use my own personal funds to re-open this historic piece of American culture.”

Some media outlets expressed sympathy for the co-host.

"In all fairness, the National Report has removed a disclaimer it once placed on its site identifying the contents as satire," MSN acknowledges, "but then again, one current headline does read "Police Barge Into Kindergarten Classroom And Taser Multiple Children 'For The Heck Of It.'"

Yahoo! News' Eric Pfeiffer gives the news station the benefit of the doubt saying "in the fast world of TV news, it’s most likely that a producer told Kooiman about the so-called news report, which then made it on air before anyone could confirm the report’s details."

That's apparently what happened when Fox News briefly fell for a fake news story in October 2010 (there's something about October) about Los Angeles looking to spend $1 billion on jetpacks for its police force. (Watch the report below)

In this case, Fox quickly retracted the story, the Huffington Post reported.

Has Fox put out a correction yet?

So far, there has been no retraction for Saturday's broadcast. And some readers don't believe one is coming.

"Why does the headline say that Fox "falls" for this bogus report?" a reader on Media Matters website asks. "They probably didn't fall for it. They just don't care whether stuff is bogus as long as it's what their viewers want to hear. And you'll never hear an apology from Fox for running this story, because that's definitely not what Fox viewers want to hear.

"I wouldn't be surprised for a minute he did it," said a reader on Huffington Post. "After all the Muslim Brotherhood he had in Washington and all the billions he gave them."